THE ITALIAN JOURNEY.
Gibbon reached Paris on the 28th January, 1763; thirty-six days, as he
tells us, after the disbanding of the militia. He remained a little
over three months in the French capital, which on the whole pleased
him so well that he thinks that if he had been independent and rich,
he might have been tempted to make it his permanent residence.
On the other hand he seems to have been little if at all aware of the
extraordinary character of the society of which he became a spectator
and for a time a member. He does not seem to have been conscious that
he was witnessing one of the most singular social phases which have
yet been presented in the history of man. And no blame attaches to him
for this. No one of his contemporaries saw deeper in this direction
than he did. It is a remarkable instance of the way in which the
widest and deepest social movements are veiled to the eyes of those
who see them, precisely because of their width and depth. Foreigners,
especially Englishmen, visited Paris in the latter half of the
eighteenth century and reported variously of their experience and
impressions. Some, like Hume and Sterne, are delighted; some, like
Gibbon, are quietly, but thoroughly pleased; some, like
Walpole--though he perhaps is a class by himself--are half pleased and
half disgusted. They all feel that there is something peculiar in what
they witness, but never seem to suspect that nothing like it was ever
seen before in the world. One is tempted to wish that they could have
seen with our eyes, or, much more, that we could have had the
privilege of enjoying their experience, of spending a few months in
that singular epoch when "society," properly so called, the assembling
of men and women in drawing-rooms for the purpose of conversation, was
the most serious as well as the most delightful business of life. Talk
and discussion in the senate, the market-place, and the schools are
cheap; even barbarians are not wholly without them. But their
refinement and concentration in the _salon_--of which the president is
a woman of tact and culture--this is a phenomenon which never appeared
but in Paris in the eighteenth century. And yet scholars, men of the
world, men of business passed through this wonderland with eyes
blindfolded. They are free to enter, they go, they come, without a
sign that they have realised the marvellous scene that they were
permitted to traverse. One does not wonder that they did not perceive
that in those graceful drawing-rooms, filled with stately company of
elaborate manners, ideas and sentiments were discussed and evolved
which would soon be more explosive than gunpowder. One does not wonder
that they did not see ahead of them--men never do. One does rather
wonder that they did not see what was before their eyes. But wonder is
useless and a mistake. People who have never seen a volcano cannot be
expected to fear the burning lava, or even to see that a volcano
differs from any other mountain.
Gibbon had brought good introductions from London, but he admits that
they were useless, or rather superfluous. His nationality and his
_Essai_ were his best recommendations. It was the day of Anglomania,
and, as he says, "every Englishman was supposed to be a patriot and a
philosopher." "I had rather be," said Mdlle. de Lespinasse to Lord
Shelburne, "the least member of the House of Commons than even the
King of Prussia." Similar things must have been said to Gibbon, but he
has not recorded them; and generally it may be said that he is
disappointingly dull and indifferent to Paris, though he liked it well
enough when there. He never caught the Paris fever as Hume did, and
Sterne, or even as Walpole did, for all the hard things he says of the
underbred and overbearing manners of the philosophers. Gibbon had
ready access to the well-known houses of Madame Geoffrin, Madame
Helvétius and the Baron d'Holbach; and his perfect mastery of the
language must have removed every obstacle in the way of complete
social intercourse. But no word in his Memoirs or Letters shows that
he really saw with the eyes of the mind the singularities of that
strange epoch. And yet he was there at an exciting and important
moment. The Order of the Jesuits was tottering to its fall; the latter
volumes of the _Encyclopedia_ were being printed, and it was no
secret; the coruscating wit and audacity of the _salons_ were at their
height. He is not unjust or prejudiced, but somewhat cold. He dines
with Baron d'Holbach, and says his dinners were excellent, but nothing
of the guests. He goes to Madame Geoffrin, and pronounces her house an
excellent one. Such faint and commonplace praise reflects on the
eulogist. The only man of letters of whom he speaks with warmth is
Helvétius. He does not appear in this first visit to have known Madame
du Deffand, who was still keeping her _salon_ with the help of the
pale deep-eyed L'Espinasse, though the final rupture was imminent.
Louis Racine died, and so did Marivaux, while he was in Paris. The old
Opera-house in the Palais Royal was burnt down when he had been there
a little over a month, and the representations were transferred to the
Salle des Machines, in the Tuileries. The equestrian statue of Louis
XV. was set up in the Place to which it gave its name (where the Luxor
column now stands, in the Place de la Concorde) amidst the jeers and
insults of the mob, who declared it would never be got to pass the
hotel of Madame de Pompadour. How much or how little of all this
touched Gibbon, we do not know. We do know one thing, that his English
clothes were unfashionable and looked very foreign, the French being
"excessively long-waisted." Doubtless his scanty purse could not
afford a new outfit, such as Walpole two years afterwards, under the
direction of Lady Hertford, promptly procured. On the 8th of May he
hurried off to Lausanne.[5]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: The chronicle of events which occurred during Gibbon's
sojourn in Paris will be found in the interesting _Mémoires de
Bachaumont._]
His ultimate object was Italy. But he wisely resolved to place a
period of solid study between the lively dissipation of Paris and his
classic pilgrimage. He knew the difference between seeing things he
had read about and reading about things after he had seen them; how
the mind, charged with associations of famous scenes, is delicately
susceptible of impressions, and how rapidly old musings take form and
colour, when, stirred by outward realities; and contrariwise, how slow
and inadequate is the effort to reverse this process, and to clothe
with memories, monuments and sites over which the spirit has not sent
a halo of previous meditation. So he settled down quietly at Lausanne
for the space of nearly a year, and commenced a most austere and
systematic course of reading on the antiquities of Italy. The list of
learned works which he perused "with his pen in his hand" is
formidable, and fills a quarto page. But he went further than this,
and compiled an elaborate treatise on the nations, provinces, and
towns of ancient Italy (which we still have) digested in alphabetical
order, in which every Latin author, from Plautus to Rutilius, is laid
under contribution for illustrative passages, which are all copied out
in full. This laborious work was evidently Gibbon's own guidebook in
his Italian travels, and one sees not only what an admirable
preparation it was for the object in view, but what a promise it
contained of that scrupulous thoroughness which was to be his mark as
an historian. His mind was indeed rapidly maturing, and becoming
conscious in what direction its strength lay.
His account of his first impressions of Rome has been often quoted,
and deserves to be so again. "My temper is not very susceptible of
enthusiasm, and the enthusiasm which I do not feel I have ever scorned
to affect. But at the distance of twenty-five years I can neither
forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I
first approached and entered the Eternal City. After a sleepless
night, I trod with a lofty step the ruins of the Forum. Each memorable
spot where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Cæsar fell, was at once
present to my eye, and several days of intoxication were lost and
enjoyed before I could descend to a cool and minute examination." He
gave eighteen weeks to the study of Rome only, and six to Naples, and
we may rest assured that he made good use of his time. But what makes
this visit to Rome memorable in his life and in literary history is
that it was the occasion and date of the first conception of his great
work. "It was at Rome, on the 15th October, 1764, as I sat musing amid
the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing
vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline
and fall of the city first started to my mind." The scene, the
contrast of the old religion and the new, the priests of Christ
replacing the flamens of Jupiter, the evensong of Catholic Rome
swelling like a dirge over the prostrate Pagan Rome might well
concentrate in one grand luminous idea the manifold but unconnected
thoughts with which his mind had so long been teeming. Gibbon had
found his work, which was destined to fill the remainder of his life.
Henceforth there is a fixed centre around which his thoughts and
musings cluster spontaneously. Difficulties and interruptions are not
wanting. The plan then formed is not taken in hand at once; on the
contrary, it is contemplated at "an awful distance"; but it led him on
like a star guiding his steps, till he reached his appointed goal.
After crossing the Alps on his homeward journey, Gibbon had had some
thoughts of visiting the southern provinces of France. But when he
reached Lyons he found letters "expressive of some impatience" for his
return. Though he does not exactly say as much, we may justly conclude
that the elder Gibbon's pecuniary difficulties were beginning to be
oppressive. So the traveller, with the dutifulness that he ever showed
to his father, at once bent his steps northward. Again he passed
through Paris, and the place had a new attraction in his eyes in the
person of Mdlle. Curchod, now become Madame Necker, and wife of the
great financier.
This perhaps will be the most convenient place to notice and estimate
a certain amount of rather spiteful gossip, of which Gibbon was the
subject in Switzerland about this time. Rousseau and his friend
Moultou have preserved it for us, and it is probable that it has lost
none of its pungency in passing through the hands of the latter. The
substance of it is this:--that in the year 1763, when Gibbon revisited
Lausanne, as we have seen, Susanne Curchod was still in a pitiable
state of melancholy and well nigh broken-hearted at Gibbon's manifest
coldness, which we know he considered to be "friendship and esteem."
Whether he even saw her on this visit cannot be considered certain,
but it is at least highly probable. Be that as it may: this is the
picture of her condition as drawn by Moultou in a letter to Rousseau:
"How sorry I am for our poor Mdlle. Curchod! Gibbon, whom she loves,
and to whom I know she has sacrificed some excellent matches, has come
to Lausanne, but cold, insensible, and as entirely cured of his old
passion as she is far from cure. She has written me a letter that
makes my heart ache." Rousseau says in reply, "He who does not
appreciate Mdlle. Curchod is not worthy of her; he who appreciates her
and separates himself from her is a man to be despised. She does not
know what she wants. Gibbon serves her better than her own heart. I
would rather a hundred times that he left her poor and free among you
than that he should take her off to be rich and miserable in
England." One does not quite see how Gibbon could have acted to the
contentment of Jean-Jacques. For not taking Mdlle. Curchod to
England--as we may presume he would have done if he had married
her--he is contemptible. Yet if he does take her he will make her
miserable, and Rousseau would rather a hundred times he left her
alone--precisely what he was doing; but then he was despicable for
doing it. The question is whether there is not a good deal of
exaggeration in all this. Only a year after the tragic condition in
which Moultou describes Mdlle. Curchod she married M. Necker, and
became devoted to her husband. A few months after she married Necker
she cordially invited Gibbon to her house every day of his sojourn in
Paris. If Gibbon had behaved in the unworthy way asserted, if she had
had her feelings so profoundly touched and lacerated as Moultou
declares, would she, or even could she, have acted thus? If she was
conscious of being wronged, and he was conscious--as he must have
been--of having acted basely, or at least unfeelingly, is it not as
good as certain that both parties would have been careful to see as
little of each other as possible? A broken-off love-match, even
without complication of unworthy conduct on either side, is generally
an effective bar to further intercourse. But in this case the
intercourse is renewed on the very first opportunity, and never
dropped till the death of one of the persons concerned.
Two letters have been preserved of Gibbon and Madame Necker
respectively, nearly of the same date, and both referring to this
rather delicate topic of their first interviews after her marriage.
Gibbon writes to his friend Holroyd, "The Curchod (Madame Necker) I
saw in Paris. She was very fond of me, and the husband particularly
civil. Could they insult me more cruelly? Ask me every evening to
supper, go to bed and leave me alone with his wife--what impertinent
security! It is making an old lover of mighty little consequence. She
is as handsome as ever, and much genteeler; seems pleased with her
wealth rather than proud of it. I was exalting Nanette d'Illens's good
luck and the fortune" (this evidently refers to some common
acquaintance, who had changed her name to advantage). "'What fortune,'
she said with an air of contempt:--'not above twenty thousand livres a
year.' I smiled, and she caught herself immediately, 'What airs I give
myself in despising twenty thousand livres a year, who a year ago
looked upon eight hundred as the summit of my wishes.'"
Let us turn to the lady's account of the same scenes. "I do not know
if I told you," she writes to a friend at Lausanne, "that I have seen
Gibbon, and it has given me more pleasure than I know how to express.
Not indeed that I retain any sentiment for a man who I think does not
deserve much" (this little toss of pique or pride need not mislead
us); "but my feminine vanity could not have had a more complete and
honest triumph. He stayed two weeks in Paris, and I had him every day
at my house; he has become soft, yielding, humble, decorous to a
fault. He was a constant witness of my husband's kindness, wit, and
gaiety, and made me remark for the first time, by his admiration for
wealth, the opulence with which I am surrounded, and which up to this
moment had only produced a disagreeable impression upon me."
Considering the very different points of view of the writers, these
letters are remarkably in unison. The solid fact of the daily visits
is recorded in both. It is easy to gather from Madame Necker's letter
that she was very glad to show Mr. Gibbon that for going farther and
not marrying him she had not fared worse. The rather acid allusion to
"opulence" is found in both letters; but much more pronounced in hers
than in his. Each hints that the other thought too much of wealth. But
he does so with delicacy, and only by implication; she charges him
coarsely with vulgar admiration for it. We may reasonably suspect that
riches had been the subject of not altogether smooth conversation
between them, in the later part of the evening, perhaps, after M.
Necker had retired in triumph to bed. One might even fancy that there
was a tacit allusion by Madame Necker to the dialogue recorded by
Gibbon to Holroyd, when his smile checked her indirect pride in her
own wealth, and that she remembered that smile with just a touch of
resentment. If so, nothing was more natural and comforting than to
charge him with the failing that he had detected in her. But here are
the facts. Eight months after her marriage, Madame Necker admits that
she had Gibbon every day to her house. He says that she was very
cordial. She would have it understood that she received him only for
the sake of gratifying a feminine vanity. For her own sake one might
prefer his interpretation to hers. It is difficult to believe that the
essentially simple-minded Madame Necker would have asked a man every
day to her house merely to triumph over him; and more difficult still
to believe that the man would have gone if such had been the object. A
little tartness in these first interviews, following on a relation of
some ambiguity, cannot surprise one. But it was not the dominant
ingredient, or the interviews must have ceased of their own accord. In
any case few will admit that either of the persons concerned would
have written as they did if Moultou's statement were correct. In
neither epistle is there any trace of a grand passion felt or
slighted. We discover the much lower level of vanity and badinage. And
the subsequent relations of Gibbon and Madame Necker all tend to prove
that this was the real one.